Author: manu prasad

  • Culture.org

    For quite a while, I have believed that culture is the most underestimated and underutilised tool among the organisation’s means of gaining strategic advantage. A few like the much venerated Zappos have used this lapse to maximum effect and by assembling a group of passionate and aligned individuals generated profits and publicity, all while retaining a culture that continues to thrive. Remember “Anyone can do what we do, but nobody can be who we are.”?

    Last week, Maneesh wrote an excellent post titled ‘The Importance of Culture‘ that started off a discussion on twitter involving him, Harish and me. Having experienced a few instances when the influx of money into an organisation (not necessarily a startup) changed the internal landscape completely, I wondered whether scale (that many a time follows money) and culture are usually mutually exclusive. It’s not always so, but it takes not just a very skilled management team, but also an empowered employee bunch down the line to make it happen. It takes communication, rewarding the right behaviour and a lot of clarity to ensure that the culture is not lost. To quote from the post, “Culture is attitude, it is not behaviour. Everyone knows this, but we all get it messed up.“

    When he linked professionalism and culture, I smiled because I remembered an incident from a couple of years back. That (very interesting) discussion, which prompted this post, was on whether passion or professionalism could better help the organisation scale. For various reasons, at that time, the two were mutually exclusive in the organisation. I argued for professionalism, because to me, it represented consistency and reliability. We both refused to accept the easy compromise of ‘both are necessary’. Towards the end, the management guru equated a professional to a mercenary. To me, the difference, was in alignment. In that sense, I agree with Maneesh that professionalism is practically non-negotiable. To quote from the post again, “You become a professional when you care. Your culture defines what you care about.“

    A couple of days after this discussion, this tweet appeared on my TL

    Posts across years, across industries, across lines of work, but if you read them, you’ll sense the similarity.

    To me, culture is not a fancy set of perks and trappings that money can buy. It’s a sense of belonging, a feeling of being connected to a set of objectives and activities that give the individual a sense of purpose. A sense of enjoying the ride even when it’s a tough one, because you know there are many who will be your parachute in case you fall off a cliff that you didn’t anticipate. When that feeling is lost, the light in the cubicle is switched off. More often than not, permanently.

    until next time, culture counter

  • Simpa Networks

    Simpa Networks envisions a world in which everyone has access to abundant, clean, modern energy. In conversation with co-founder Michael MacHarg

    [scribd id=85602386 key=key-nmg5dtslv9860ekdc1o mode=list]

  • Pinning it down

    Though it’s almost been 2 years since it launched, the buzz on Pinterest has grown stronger in the last few months. This infographic should help you get a quick update. The ‘experts’ are polarised on this, and I have seen some digs on my twitter timeline, which remind me of the things I used to hear about Twitter on Facebook. 🙂 Will Pinterest grow that big? I don’t know, but it always helps to build one’s own perspective.

    This is one of those social networks which have not been easy for me to adopt. As the text-only posts here would indicate, I am not an ‘image’ person. 🙂 This was probably why delicious worked for me very well. But I did manage to find my own applications of Pinterest, most significantly, my infographics board, which is now nearing a 100 pins, and others that I enjoy – Angry Birds, Star Farce, and so on. One apprehension I have is whether it will go the way of all social platforms when they go more mainstream – from pinning ‘what I like’ to ‘what I think you want to see’ or ‘what I want you to see’. An extension of the carefully crafted persona.

    But meanwhile, over at Myntra, we have created an account and have been busy pinning and ‘boarding’. We’re in the process of experimenting with the platform, and as part of that, have also integrated it on our fashion blog. We have already found quite a few use cases for it, and I plan to consolidate that before moving further on boards.

    One of the most interesting stats in the infographic I shared earlier is that Pinterest has now beaten twitter as a source for referral traffic. From a brand perspective, this is indeed turning out to be an interesting tool, especially if the brand is related to e-com or fashion. Many fashion brands are already there. In fact, JustFabulous is even doing an extremely interesting Scrabble based contest there. I’d think that food, travel, and other visually appealing domains would also do well here. In fact there are over 100 brands across categories already on Pinterest.

    So, should you believe the hype? Not necessarily, but as a brand marketer or a social web practitioner, I think it’s probably a good time to take a long look at Pinterest and see if it can deliver value to your brand. It could be traffic generation, relationship building, or thought leadership, and these are just a few use cases. Unless you play, you won’t know. 🙂

    until next time, you could fancy this too 😉

  • Green Evangelist

    Green Evangelist aims to ‘evangelise’ sustainability through the ‘humanware’ aspect rather than the ‘techware’. In conversation with founders Sejal Sheth and Latha Sankarnarayan….

    [scribd id=84602869 key=key-25o0y2t76pj5kyhguclg mode=list]

  • Human Brands

    Trendwatching’s trend for March 2012 is quite an interesting one – ‘Flawsome‘, driven by brands becoming more ‘human’ and the fast rise of transparency. It’s quite an irony – this ‘fall out’ of the era in which people are trying to be brands and making sure that (even) their Facebook Timeline (in addition to LI, Twitter etc) showcase them at their best/ a perfect life. Yes, I’m generalising.

    I think, more than anything else, this trend is forced on brands by the sheer volume of conversations that are generated in/by social media. Even the best, most conversational and favourite brands/organisations – from Coke to Google to Twitter to Apple etc have their flaws. These cause different challenges for different brands eg. web centric companies generate conversations because of their ‘location’  and more is expected of them because they are digital natives; ‘offline’ brands are forced to engage and include this in their brand DNA. Since bad experiences are expressed more than good ones, ‘flawsome’ is an inevitability.

    The excellent opportunity in this, if brands get the communication right, is to not just being able to involve consumers in correcting the flaws, but in also evolving a league of customers who will actively speak for the brand, because of a sense of ownership they can be made to develop. The other opportunity is to target better and build a set of consumers who can identify with the brands’s attitude and philosophy. This would not just have an effect on communication, but also on vision and processes across the board – product design, customer care, hiring and so on. ‘One size fits no one’ is something that brands could take more seriously now.

    As a brand marketer, and one who is active on social media, I’d love the freedom to say ‘Damn, that was a #fail. But hey, we tried” 🙂

    until next time, winsome brands